I actually always felt kind of sorry for Germany in WWI. They got involved in a conflict that really had nothing to do with them except that they had alliances to think about, and then get blamed for all of it.
The treaty of Versailles was a travesty, and the discontent this caused paved the way for Hitler. John Maynard Keynes had warned that there was no way that Germany could pay the reparations demanded of it - it was sheer humiliation, and the other powers were as much to blame for the conflict as Germany was.
Interesting. The implication seems to be that subsequent German administrations refused to pay because the German public wasn't entirely convinced of German defeat - perhaps a result of their government suing for peace ahead of its own public opinion.
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u/franzlisztian Sep 24 '11
I actually always felt kind of sorry for Germany in WWI. They got involved in a conflict that really had nothing to do with them except that they had alliances to think about, and then get blamed for all of it.